What Could Have Been
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: Part of moving forward is learning to live outside of what could have been. Set in S4. Mark-centric. Mark/Addison implied.


**A/N: I'm a sucker for my muse and my muse loves sad!fic**

**Disclaimer: ****I'm sure it's shocking but I don't own a thing. **

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><p><em>Hey Lucy, I remember your name,<em>  
><em>I left a dozen roses on your grave today,<em>  
><em>I'm in the grass on my knees, wipe the leaves away,<em>  
><em>I just came to talk for awhile, got some things I need to say,<em>

_Now that it's over, I just want to hold her,_  
><em>I'd give up all the world to see, <em>  
><em>That little piece of heaven looking back at me,<em>  
><em>Now that it's over, I just want to hold her,<em>  
><em>I've got to live with the choices I've made, <em>  
><em>And I can't live with myself today<strong><br>**_-Skillet's "Lucy"

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><p>Cotton candy pink fabric worried by his anxious thumbs swayed gently from his fingertips in the summer breeze as he sat on the rain softened ground and pulled the long grass from where it kissed the gray stone. With a shaking hand, he placed the bouquet of roses beneath her beautiful name and pulled the fabric to his chest a tear dared to slip from the corner of his left eye. "Hey Ella."<p>

Ella Adrienne Montgomery-Sloan. They had decided on her name the day after she had told him that she was pregnant with his baby, laying in bed with tangled limbs and the pink Yankees creeper and calendar sat on the bedside table – on top of her overturned wedding picture. She had picked out Ella after hearing stories of his grandmother, the old broad had been the only member of his biological family to give a damn about him, and he had wept at her generosity. Adrienne had come from his insistence because he loved the way it flowed off his tongue – Ella Adrienne, his daughter. There had never been a discussion of a boy's name as they had both been sure they would have a daughter.

A daughter with her gap-tooth grin, his blue eyes, and more intelligent than the both of them combined.

"Today would have been your first birthday." A year ago they were both in Seattle and at least had the potential for happiness. A year and nine months ago they had been laying in bed with his thumb tracing circles over her invisible bump while she fought back morning sickness. Now, well, now all that was left was the wreckage; a headstone and a long-distance phone bill.

"Your mom left Seattle for Los Angeles." Mark stopped fighting the tears. "I hope that she is happy there because she really deserves to be happy, you know? Don't hate her, okay? Don't hate her because the decision she made wasn't entirely her own – I didn't help things. We both... we're both to blame for what happened. She wasn't ready to let go of Derek and I wasn't ready to be the kind of man who could wait for her. I wasn't the man that she needed me to be and she wasn't the woman who was willing to wait for me to grow the hell up. As much as it kills me to admit, she was right... I wasn't ready to be a father, Ella. I would have been a horrible father because I would have been a horrible man to your mother. I loved her then and I love her now, with every beat of my heart, but I would have been horrible to her."

He saw ghosts of them on every street corner; an auburn haired mother with a fiery-haired pixie clinging to her leg with his blue eyes staring back at him. Dreams were nightmares because in them he heard her laughter and his daughter's cries. His bones ached for his family that never had the chance to be and sometimes it almost felt like it could kill him. Addison wasn't the only one to blame, he had more than helped blow their chance. That fact made it almost impossible to live with himself, especially today.

"I wonder who you would be." He wiped his tears on the back of his wrist. "Your mom is the baby doctor but, if I remember my med school years correctly, you would be taking your first tumbling steps and speaking your first words by now. I'd be trying to teach you the line up for the Yankees and we'd put my season tickets to good use for your birthday. Addie, your mom, she would be trying to teach you piano because Bizzy made her take lessons for years and years and she'd have read all that literature about how learning the piano can stimulate brain growth. She'd probably also have you speaking French already because her nanny when she was a baby taught her how to speak French – your grandmother actually fired that nanny because your mother spoke French before she spoke English. Grandma Bizzy is a bit of a nutcase and a WASP but I think she would have loved you in her own way – the captain and Archer too. Your mom's family is clinically insane and a real pain in the ass but they would have loved you. My family... not so much because they're physically incapable of loving anyone but themselves. I always had Derek's family."

He sighed at the thought of his best friend.

"Once Derek got over it, I'd like to think that he would have made an awesome Uncle Derek. He might have never spoken to your mom again but we're brothers, you know? Got the scar on my palm to prove it, too. Blood brothers since we went to camp the summer after third grade." His thoughts were jumbled and followed no linear train. "I think that his family would have loved you because they loved me and Addison in spite of everything. Nancy and Amelia, in any event. They forgave us before even Derek did."

He didn't know why he kept talking when there was no way for his daughter to answer him back but it helped to get all of it out.

"I wish I could go back and be a better man, a man who could be a father," he explained. "Wish I could go back and be there while Addison got over Derek, help her. Hang onto her, fight for her instead of letting her slip into the arms of Karev and letting her run to LA. If I could do it all over, I'd change everything. But maybe I wouldn't because maybe Red is happy out there."

"I just wish I could know you." His fingers ghosted over his lips and then pressed firmly to the angel carved into the stone beside her name – the only kiss he would ever be able to give his daughter. "I love you, Ella Adrienne, forever."

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><p><strong>The counselor said here's what you need to do — stop acting like you had a procedure, and act like you had a death in the family. So the couple went home and they made three decisions; number one, they decided to have a funeral service for the baby; number two, they bought a tiny little headstone; and the last decision to make was what to name the baby. After a couple weeks they finally decided they would call her… Lucy."<strong>

**– _John L. Cooper of Skillet;_**


End file.
